| gebx said: * Insert Picard smaking head pic here The Xbox 360 drive is x 12, the speed slows the further away from the middle the data is located. Programmers know this and will place data that needs to be accessed faster near the middle, and less important data that doesn't need quick access farthest from the middle. Blu Ray drive reads at a constant speed, while it is faster then the 360 drive at the edge, its slower then the 360 near the middle.
Where's MikeB?? at least he knows his shit... |
DVDs and HD-DVDs spin at a constant speed, but read at a variable bit-rate because the number of bits that can be read per second is less toward the spindle. Blu-ray reads at a constant bit-rate, so their drive has to be variable speed to adjust.
The fact that Blu-ray drives spin at variable speeds worries me regarding the lifespan of the stepper motors... it's harder on them to change speed than to rotate at a constant speed (changing momentum due to accelleration/deceleration in proportion to the mass of the disc, etc.).
The old laser-disc players (I have one and about 90 movies) could play both CAV and CLV movies which had dramatically different characteristics regarding spin-rate, bit-rate, etc. But the motors in those players were fairly beefy (had to be to handle those big discs).
